She doesn’t say a word to me, just nods as I lower myself out of her sight and down the rungs.
I’m on the ground in a few seconds, a very quiet Saylor not far behind me as I wait at the bottom. When she’s on the second step from the ground, her heel slips. Just as I step forward and reach out to her hips to help her, she spins around.
Our bodies are pressed against each other with her hands flat against my chest. Her expression is startled, but her eyes remain on mine. Her breath an audible hitch.
And fuck if standing like this with her doesn’t make me want to lean in and kiss her. It all comes back: her taste, that little sound she used to make in the back of her throat, the scar on the back of her head from falling off the brick wall that I’d feel when grabbing the back of it to direct the angle of our kiss. All of it.
And it’s a temptation like I haven’t felt in forever.
“Hayes.”
“Yeah?” My gaze flickers from hers down to her lips and then back up. I want to know what her eyes are telling me.
“Nothing. Never mind.” She shakes her head and steps back.
I clench my jaw. Fist my hands. Tell myself to let her walk away. To not notice the freckles on her nose are still there. The ones I used to tease her about as a kid, then later, loved staring at when she fell asleep in the bed of my truck at the drive-in when we were teenagers.
The thought triggers so many more things I used to love about her. Reminds me how close we were. How many parts of our lives were woven so tightly it was like we were one.
My God. I know we were young. Know that I did the right thing in chasing my dreams since she was only seventeen and I was nineteen. But how selfish was I to leave without an explanation or a goodbye?
Ass. Hole. Yep. You sure as hell were one, Whitley.
And for that I deserve her understandable caution, every bit of her wrath, and every ounce of her hatred.
I start behind her down the worn path toward the car. Use the sight of her hips swaying to distract me from the memories rushing back.
My mind still runs but turns instead to how this was supposed to be easy. How I was going to come back, convince her to go to the wedding, and do my part to help her show up Mitch. Debt repaid just in time to walk away. Again.
And yet one look at Saylor the other day and I knew it was going to be far from easy. That combination of the fresh-faced girl-next-door I left mixed with the hurt and feistiness I see now, and I can’t help but wonder what if. What if I hadn’t left? And how did my leaving change her life’s path somehow?
Fuck that, Whitley. You did what you had to do. Took advantage of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that definitely panned out.
But watching her ahead of me with the hurt in her eyes fresh in my mind, I know this is going to be harder than I expected.
Good thing she rejected the offer.
I have a plan. I have my world. My perfect, chaotic, surreal, fucking awesome world and there’s no room for error. She fits nowhere in it. That’s what I told myself when I left. That’s what I’m standing by now.
I’m just here to repay a debt to Ryder.
Just here to ease the guilt over what I did to her.
So why am I already thinking about the next time I can see her again?
I wanted him to kiss me.
That’s my first thought when I wake up. How standing beneath the tree house with his hands on my hips and the moonlight in his hair in the field we used to play in as kids, I wanted him to kiss me. Lean in and take over. Wash away any of the doubt about why I walked away from Mitch. Rationalize why seeing him again makes me want in ways I shouldn’t want.
And then I move. My head pounds. My mouth’s dry. My hair is matted. And I’m still in last night’s clothes.
I want to die. Like throw my head in the toilet, and puke my brains out to make this roiling in my stomach, spinning of my head, and hot flash over my skin type of sick go away.
But I can’t. I think my body wants to punish me for being such an idiot last night. For thinking if I swung my hips enough or flirted with Ryder’s friends more, that it would make Hayes realize what he lost.
A foolish, amateur bullshit move. Like he hasn’t seen that one before from one of the million women who would do just about anything to be a notch on his belt.
And the joke’s on me as I lie in bed while the rest of the night—or what I remember of it—replays through my mind. How right now I probably couldn’t even dry heave if I tried so I can feel better, and yet last night I was able to word vomit every little detail about Mitch to Hayes. How I walked away from a perfectly good relationship and every little girl’s dream wedding. How Mitch invited me to watch him marry his successful, no doubt more-suited match. How I blamed Ryder for taking my RSVP response, twisting it every which way, and then planting the notion that I should attend because my presence might help the shop. All of it, right down to when he asked why I left.